PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 98: HOW DO YOU TREAT YOUR HUSBAND?

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 98: HOW DO YOU TREAT YOUR HUSBAND?

Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies! I have a guest with me today, Erin Harrison. Erin and her husband and family are part of our hilltop family. They live nearby and they are such a blessing.

Erin has been with me before on the podcast. If you haven’t heard her before she was with me for podcast 59 and we talked about how motherhood is an eternal work. She was also on podcast 60, which was about how you are the queen of your home.

Last year Erin and I were also doing live TALK SHOWS together where you could watch us and listen. We enjoyed doing those together. Then Erin got rather busy doing something else and I’m going to get her to tell you about it. But we do hope to get back to doing them, don’t we?

Any way it is lovely to have you, Erin, love you and just tell the ladies what has been keeping you busy over these last few months.

Erin Harrison: Oh yes! Back about a year ago, just being a part of the community and the fellowship and getting to know Nancy and Colin and everything they stand for, there was one thing I wasn’t really accustomed to.

A lot of Christian circles don’t embrace the idea of motherhood and don’t want to embrace the idea of larger families. When we stopped at five because I had health concerns, I always thought I would adopt but it never came to pass so I had continually left it in the Lord’s hands.

Adoption can be a very lengthy and financially straining process for a lot of families but I had heard that there was another way to do it.

I heard last summer that there was a way you could take classes and join into the fostering care system. You could foster to adopt. There are different agencies that work with moms and dads that want to expand their family and welcome new little ones into the home.

It can be a scary and daunting thing. You hear a lot of horror stories of people that have had situations that have gotten really out of control and things like that. But I just felt a real call to do it because it’s free to adopt through the fostering system and you can get some beautiful children.

Sometimes they’re not able to be reunited with their family, but if they, are you know that you’re there to stand in the gap and help with that whole process and even minister to the family.

What is neat is that you can welcome these children into your home and adopt them after fostering them for six months.

We took the classes and we ended up getting our first child the end of October, a little four-year-old little boy. He has extreme special needs.

I thought when we were getting into it we were going to be getting a little newborn. I even got little newborn clothes and I got already for one of these little newborns that would maybe be coming into our home.

Well, God had different plans.

When I got the call I had waited for a month and I was just on bated breath and I was waiting and waiting and wondering why we hadn’t gotten the call and at last the call came!

They said there was a sweet little four-year-old little boy, African American little boy, and he needs a forever home. He was looking to be adopted.

My husband and I didn’t even pray about it. We just said, “Yes!” and we signed up!

We signed up and it was exactly the opposite of what we had thought.

NC: And you had no idea! They didn’t even tell you of all his medical needs, did they?

EH: No, no!

They were going to be dropping him off at the house and then all of the sudden they’re telling me to come to Vanderbilt Hospital. Not only do I find out the child is non-verbal but he’s not able to eat food with his mouth. He has a tracheotomy so he has this little hole in his throat that he breathes out of and he has a feeding tube.

He had seizures and had had countless surgeries. It’s just a miracle that he was even alive! He was a twin and all this stuff.

Not only did I find all this out on the first day but I also find out that he comes with, through the DCS, that they hire 24 hour nursing.

That right there was like, “What, what? What does that mean?”

There’s going to be these nurses coming into your home. Each of them takes a 12-hour shift but you have these people in your home, helping you take care of this child 24/7.

NC: Whew and it’s only Erin who would take on things like this, bigger than what normal people could ever do.

EH: The doctor said to me, “You didn’t know any of this?”

I said, “No!”

He said, “Well you can back out, we would understand” because that is kind of a lot.

NC: Yes. He doesn’t walk or anything.

EH: So I prayed about it and that night when I slept I had this vision or dream. It’s such a big decision to say, “Yes” to something like that.

It’s a life long decision because you don’t know how they’ll recover. I believe he will fully recover. He doesn’t walk either. He just had hip surgery. In my vision I saw all these people lying on the ground, all these lame people with all these different conditions. My hands were reaching toward them and the Lord’s hands were coming through my hands towards all these people.

He said to me, “What you do to the least of these you’ve done to Me.”

These are the least of these. These are the people that everybody discards and abandons because it’s too hard and too difficult. They need somebody with some grit. I guess the Lord knew that my husband and I could handle it.

I think the most difficult part for us is having the in-home nursing because think about it, you’ve got people monitoring you day and night. We’ve had all kinds of weird, crazy stuff. You wouldn’t even believe it. I can’t even get into all of the crazy stories.

I did see that the Lord takes everything and uses it for His glory.

NC: I must just say here: I think that anyone else would have given up by now but you have kept on. You have kept on keeping on and you have been through massive things. We wouldn’t have time to speak about all the challenges that Erin has faced.

EH: It will be in my book. Hopefully, I will get the first installment of the book coming out this spring sometime. You’ll get to read about it. It’s kind of an earth-shattering story. You have got to hear the story. You’ll be like, “Oh my goodness!” Your eyes will be bulging out!

NC: You can’t believe what all has happened to one person!

EH: But you’ll get to hear it at some point.

Any way, so we had all these nurses in the home all the time. I was kind of complaining about it here and there. It’s hard because you can’t just have your family. You’ve got the child in the living room and the nurse in the living room.

They are constantly picking up your child and parenting your child in ways you might not want to parent your child. You want to decide how you do the parenting and they just come in there and take over the whole scene.

I had to set ground rules and all this kind of stuff. But trying to have a good attitude about it has been a real challenge for me. I’ve had to change my perspective because everything is mindset.

One of the mindsets I had to come to was, “I am the queen of my home and I even have servants!”

NC: Yes, that’s a good way to think about it!

EH: I don’t even have to pay for it!

These women come into my home and they help me change diapers and they help me do all the dirty jobs of the complex medical needs type of stuff.

NC: But it is amazing how you have learned to do so much for him and you can do it better than even any of the nurses.

EH: Well, he nearly died a few times on the watch of the nurses, and I have had to intervene and help save his life. I took classes to save his life and I’ve had to do it a couple of times.

NC: You saved his life the other night when we were there! Oh goodness me, he was choking, and you just went over and fixed him up.

EH: I just popped him over and popping him on the back. The little part of the little plastic animal that he had chewed off shot right out of his windpipe.

There are all these things but another thing, too, is that God put these nurses in my home to minister to.

You wouldn’t believe the things that they come to me with that they are struggling with.

NC: You were telling me about the one who was going through a struggle in her marriage. Tell us about that.

EH: Yes, yes, well she was actually with tears in her eyes at a crossroads. She said she’s done. She’s done; she doesn’t feel like she loves her husband anymore and she was just ready to throw in the towel.

I know right then and there I just prayed and the Lord just gave me the courage to plow right through all of that junk because that’s what it is: it’s just junk.

No man and no woman are perfect. All of us have flaws.

God creates men with a different role than He does women. We don’t want men to be like women.

I think Hollywood and the media and the whole world has a different picture or portrayal of what a man is supposed to be. They are supposed to be so sensitive and all about our feelings and cater to all of our whims and our needs.

That’s not a real man! That’s a sissy man.

NC: I remember counseling a woman and she was sharing with me, and other women had counseled her to leave her husband because she said he didn’t really know how to sympathize with her. She said a while back her father died, and he didn’t really know how to really sympathize.

Goodness me, some men can, but often they don’t know how. We can’t expect our husbands to meet our deep emotional needs. Only God can do that.

EH: The sooner people realize that the better because I realized that about ten years ago and it’s been a work in process. It didn’t all happen over night.

I started to search the Scriptures about this because I wasn’t learning it in the churches.

I felt really frustrated because I was going to Spirit-filled churches and they were talking about speaking in tongues or they were talking about this or how you can serve in the church and all this kind of stuff.

I felt like everything I had read about the woman was to love your husband, love your children, and be a keeper of the home just like Titus 2 says: that the older women teach the younger women to be discreet, to love their husbands.

NC: To love their children.

EH: Yes and so I’m thinking, “Why am I not learning all this stuff about what the Bible is teaching me about motherhood?”

I was starting to have babies and I was thinking, “I need help with this season of life. I need help with how to be a better mother and how to be a better wife and how to be a better housekeeper.”

I was a slob. I had clutter everywhere. I had stuff coming out of my closets. If you opened my closet doors, stuff would come flying out.

There was dust everywhere and dirt and grime. I was yelling at my husband and crying all the time.

I was spending time just pouting in my room and feeling sorry for myself because, “I was abused! And oh my goodness, all this bad stuff happened to me.”

I wanted my husband to sit all day long and mourn with me and put his sackcloth and ashes on!

NC: So how did he get out of that?

EH: Well, he would just go to work anyway! He didn’t care! He had stuff to do. He said, “I can’t sit around all day!”

NC: You just had to woman-up!

EH: Finally I just started reading and I’m like, “Oh my goodness!”

One of the Bible verses I read says: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as to the Lord.”

I thought, “Whoa, as unto the Lord!” So kind of like unto the Lord or as you would unto the Lord.

I’m a very visual person so I started trying to visualize my husband as Jesus.

When he would come home I thought, “What would I do if Jesus Christ Himself came traipsing through the door there?”

I would be like, “Oh Lord, please come in! I welcome you into my home! I’m so glad You’re here! You’re so amazing; You are the most beautiful Lord in the whole world!

“Please, have a seat, have a seat in the best seat of the house. Can I get You anything? Can I get You a glass of water? Would you like any ice in it?”

If He says two, “Oh yes, would you like two or three? Anything you want! Let me put this under Your feet. Let me give You a massage. Let me take my very hair and anoint Your feet with oil!”

NC: Wow.

EH: So I started to think of it that way.

When my husband would come home and I would lavish all of this benevolence to him and all this, he would just act like, “What in the world happened to my wife?”

The first day I got on my knees and I cried and said, “Forgive me. I’ve been so awful. I’ve been terribly selfish and always worried about how I feel. “Here you are working every day and providing for me and the children and I just want you to come home and take care of the children and help do the dishes when you’ve been outside all day long and I just keep thinking about myself.

“I keep nagging you about what you are eating and making you feel bad about this and making you feel bad about that. I just am very sorry. Do you forgive me?”

I was crying. I had tears. I think I had so many tears in my hair I could have anointed his feet with it. I wanted to wash his feet. I wanted to lay there and die I just felt so horrible about how I treated him.

He just sat there and wept and he held me in his arms and said, “Oh you haven’t been that bad.”

It just seemed to start a whole new chapter of life. I just started looking at him differently as I would unto the Lord.

The other day I told him that I had shared this with the nurse. He said, “You really do treat me like the Lord.”

He said, “You really do.”

We just love each other so much. We have the most amazing relationship and marriage.

I told this to the nurse the other day and she’s like, “But he’s so mean and he’s so terrible and he’s so rough and gruff!”

I said to her, “That’s sexy to be rough and gruff though. That’s what a real man is: rough and gruff. Yeah, that’s what you want!”

I tried to change her perspective.

I said, “Does your husband molest your children?”

She says, “No.”

“Does he beat you every day?”

She says, “No. He would never beat me.”

I said, “Does he go and get drunk and go cheat on you and go with all these women and everything?”

She said, “No, he’s never done that. He’s always faithful.”

I said, “You should be thankful! My goodness, shame on you! You’ve got a good one! He’s a keeper!”

“Really, you think so?” she said.

“Yes, you fight for your marriage! How much do you love Jesus?”

She said, “With all my heart.”

I said, “Then completely give yourself to the Lord and do exactly what His Word says” and I showed her that Scripture verse.

I said, “Put all your selfishness aside. Put Jesus first. He only asks you these three little things.”

You know, you see those memes all over the Internet. They say, “I gave you one job. And then you can’t even do that one job?”

So I said, “Love your husband. Treat him as you would treat the Lord Jesus Himself. Kill him with kindness. Get on your face before the Lord.

“The Bible says, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Your husband is your closest neighbor. Your neighbor is anybody that isn’t yourself.

“How are you treating him? Are you treating him the way you would want to be treated?”

She says, “No!”

She couldn’t believe all this stuff.

The next day I called Vange to come over and help me tag team and give her some confirmation.

Vange had some beautiful revelations, too. She was saying how sacred marriage is and how it’s a covenant in blood.

She said Jesus and the church is a picture of marriage and how when Jesus bled and died on the cross He shed His blood and it was that blood covenant and we’re covered in His blood.

When you marry somebody and you’re on your marriage bed, the first time a woman is with her husband, there’s blood that comes. That’s how they used to know that the marriage is sealed for thousands of years. They had a little cloth.

NC: They would put the little cloth on the first night of the marriage and then, if the husband ever came and accused his wife of being in fornication before marriage, the parents would bring the cloth before the judges and there was the proof that she was a virgin.

Also, it was a covenant sealed in blood.

EH: So it’s not a light thing. In the world people get married and divorced all the time. When people fall out of love with somebody you just give up and you just go find somebody else.

But Vange and I assured her and we guaranteed her. We said, “We can guarantee you that if you leave this one and you get another one he might woo you until he can get you in the bed and then you’ll be chopped liver again.”

It’s not how somebody treats you. It’s how you perceive it. It’s a whole different realm until you put it into the perspective of what do the Scriptures say and what God says.

NC: I am just going to pop in here and just give this little statement, this truth, that marriage, more than anything else in the whole world, is the reflection of the image of God.

I mean, marriage reveals Christ and His bride. This is the whole picture. This is what marriage is meant to be.

If we could only keep that in our hearts because how we’re going to treat Christ is how we’re going to treat our husbands. As you were saying, treat him like Jesus.

Anyway, what happened? Did she listen to your counseling?

EH: Well first she told me what a terrible person he was.

I told her just like I said in the beginning, with the dream of the foster child I had, that what you do to the least of these you have done unto Christ.

She thinks very lowly of her husband. In her eyes he is the least of these. I said, “What you have done unto to the least of these, you have done unto Me.”

The Scripture on that one was Matthew 25:40: “ And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

It goes back to “As unto the Lord.”

So if you’re treating him like trash and he is trash, you’re doing it unto the Lord. He is the least of these in your mind and so whatever you do to him you’re doing it unto the Lord.

You might as well just treat him like you would the Lord and skip all that other junk and have it wonderful!

After the weekend she came back to take care of the little child and she says, “Oh I have to tell you, it is so miraculous!”

I said, “What happened? Did you implement some of these things that Vange and I told you that come from the Scriptures?”

She said, “Yes and you wouldn’t believe it, my husband was so kind in return.”

NC: How wonderful.

EH: She said, “It softened his heart. He wanted to please me.”

He even cleaned the whole garage for her.

She said, “I couldn’t believe it! Nobody has ever told me this before. In my church everybody just told me to leave him. In my church they told me that he’s a bad man and that I deserve better.”

I said, “Oh my goodness!”

She said, “But you know what? I see it. I see the truth of it and I’m going to fight for my marriage. I’m not going to throw it away. It is a gift from God.”

NC: How beautiful.

I think this is such a wonderful testimony. How true: if only each one of us could try to treat our husbands like Jesus. That’s what we’re meant to do.

We need to realize, too, the great honor that God has put on marriage. I love that quote of John Piper. He says: “There has never been a generation whose view of marriage is high enough.”

EH: Oh that’s so true!

NC: I think that is so true. I don’t think any of us have really got the true revelation of God’s view that He has on marriage because it is to portray the picture of Christ and the church.

EH: You’ll never enjoy the fullness of His glory in your marriage if you don’t obey that Scripture verse. I’m convinced of it.

I have that fullness and it’s so overflowing! It’s so beautiful and so stress free and so peaceful and amazing when your marriage is good.

It’s so simple. All I had to do was just treat him with kindness and honor as I would to the Lord and it’s like, “Wow!”

NC: I know. You can’t just love on a man and serve him and treat him with sweetness and kindness . . .

EH: Yeah because he doesn’t deserve it, does he?

NC: Well maybe not, but that doesn’t matter.

EH: It doesn’t matter because it’s what God tells us to do.

NC: Yes, it’s what we’re to do.

EH: You’re doing it as unto the Lord. You’re not doing it for him; you’re doing it for the Lord.

NC: But then, the thing is, you can’t do that without them being softened and them returning it.

EH: Right, exactly. When you do it God’s way it just works.

NC: It does, God’s way works.

But I see, even in the church today, that more and more people believe that there must be this equality.  Of course, we are created equal. Man and women are created in the image of God.

There is only one Scripture talking about how Adam was created but a whole passage about how the woman was created. She was the crowning glory of creation.

We are so blessed to be women but we don’t have to vie for position and want to be like the man.

If only we can just see that when God created male and female, He created us equal but He created us with different functions.

That’s just so simple.

EH: How are you ever going to feel the fullness and the joy of being the queen of your home when you don’t honor the king? You can’t be a queen without a king.

But most women don’t treat their husbands like kings, do they? But they want to be the queen and they want their husband to be the servant.

NC: It is meant to be like that: king and queen. It really is.

EH: He will treat you like the queen if you treat him like the king. It’s such a beautiful thing. I don’t know how anybody can miss that mark.

NC: You see, also so many women today do not want to embrace their beautiful role in the home, which God gave to the woman.

EH: And it’s so easy!

NC: She does not want to be the queen of her home. Instead women want to go out and get a job like the men do.

They are getting into that realm and so they don’t have the time to be queen of their home. It takes time to be queen of your home, doesn’t it?

EH: It does.

NC: They’re not embracing it.

They are having what they call today “egalitarian marriages” where everyone has to do things. The man has to do so much in the house and so on.

Look, goodness, if a man’s out there working hard to provide, that’s his job! We don’t have to expect them to have to come home and do our job.

God has given us the privilege to manage our homes. We’re not inferior. We have a huge career to be the manager and ruler of our kingdom, or rather, our “queendom.”

EH: It’s pretty amazing, I know!

This lady is a nurse by day, by trade, and she worked very hard for that position and everything to get that, and then she comes two days a week here.

I told her, “Guess what? I get to be the nurse in my own home. I get to be the nurse and the doctor. I get to be the cook. I get to have all these different positions in my own home! I’m like the CEO. I don’t have to answer to anybody.”

 Of course my husband, ultimately, but he trusts me because we have such a wonderful relationship. He just delegates all these things to me, and he trusts me. I can go and do whatever I do because he knows I have his best interest at heart and the family’s best interest at heart and God’s best interest at heart.

He learned to trust me over the years because he used to be kind of strict about where I could go and what I could do. He realized. It just came with time. It isn’t all peaches and cream in the beginning.

The nurse and I were talking on a ride to the hospital today, because I have to do all these appointments, and she asked, “What if he is grumpy?”

I said, “So what if he is? It’s just part of the whole thing. You have to press in, keep going, and keep fighting. A fight isn’t over with one battle. It’s a fight so you keep fighting. You contend for it. You push in and you press in. You don’t just lay down and leave it go. You keep going and you keep pressing. It’s like the battering ram. You keep battering and battering. You keep working.”

I said, “With practice it becomes easier because in the beginning, treating him like the Lord, it comes so unnatural at first.

“You feel kind of like a fish out of the water. You think, ‘Oh he doesn’t deserve this. Why am I doing this? He’s being grumpy and it didn’t work. It’s not working and he’s still being mean.’”

Well Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? It just takes time!

I can tell you the truth that there were times that I slipped up and got selfish again, felt sorry for myself again, and had my pity-party again.

But I kept rising up and saying, “No, I’m not going to do that again! My life is worth more than that. I don’t need to sit in a wallow of tears and muck. I can treat my husband good again. I don’t care what he did.

The other day I was home alone and I had to take the little one and I didn’t have the help and everything and everybody was gone.

He was on his way to work and, I’ll just use this as an example, it was a Saturday and I thought, “Usually he never works on a Saturday. He’s home on a Saturday.”

In my flesh I thought and wanted to say, “You’re seriously going to leave me on a Saturday when he just came home from the hospital. You’re seriously going to leave me on a Saturday?”

You know how you want to do that attitude thing? It came to my mind to say it and I caught myself. Practicing all these years has proven to help me to overcome in those areas and have victory.

Instead I looked at him and I smiled, gave him a kiss and a big, huge hug and I said, “Oh well I love you so much! Have the most amazing day! Thank you so much for working and providing for our family.”

I said, “I’ll see you when you get home and I’ll try to make a really nice dinner for you!”

Then he left. He was happy and I was happy. It cheered my whole spirit up just by doing what was against nature and trying to have a healthy, wholesome perspective and be kind to my husband.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was just working! The Lord calls him to be a provider. So just being thankful for that and not judging him and having no bitterness, I felt better for the whole day!

I did myself a favor. He didn’t even know I was thinking that thought. I did my foster child a favor. I did the whole household a favor.

As a mother, we’re the heart of the home so our attitude kind of dictates the mood of the home.

NC: It all comes back to our attitude, doesn’t it?

I think one of the things we can gravitate so easily to as women and as wives is listening to those little self-pity tricks, “Oh poor me.”

Our husbands aren’t perfect but we’re not perfect, either.

EH: We surely are not.

NC: We can’t go by that. Sometimes, you know, maybe my husband will do something and maybe it’s not what I want him to do or maybe he doesn’t think like I do.

But then I have think, “Oh he’s not me. He’s not a woman. He’s a man and I love this man!” I think, “Oh I just love you just how you are.”

You’ve just got to get that attitude. It’s like we have to watch that we don’t bring God down to our level. We often do that.  We try to make God and bring Him into our thoughts and make Him fit in to our ideas.

We dare not do that!

Sometimes we do it to our husbands. We want to make them like women and we want to make them think the way we do and be that kind of sensitive in that “woman-like” way.

No! They’re men! Come on!

EH: If my husband were like that I would be laughing! Oh my goodness, that would be the most pathetic thing in the whole world. But he’s so manly!

I always say, “Oh I just love you! You’re a manly man!”

Then he says, “Yeah!”

Men like to be manly men and you just pump them up for being a manly man.

NC: Yes but bringing them down to our level and getting them to work around the house and do dishes is not letting them be a manly man!

It’s lovely when a mother has little children around her and her husband will come and just help her, that’s beautiful.

But we shouldn’t have to expect them to suddenly be taking on our role because that’s our role. Don’t you think that?

EH: It is our role! God designed us to be the nurturers.

NC: The very first thing that God spoke about the woman to Adam, because He said that it was not good for him to be alone, so God said to Adam, “It’s not good for a man to be alone so I will make a helpmeet for you.”

He said, “I will make a helper for him.” The Hebrew word is “ezer” and it means: “helper.”

A lot of women don’t really like the idea of helper. But it’s a beautiful word. It’s an anointing that God has put in women.

EH: It’s beautiful.

NC: It’s a God anointing because God Himself is called the Helper. He comes to our aide. He comes to help us. He does that just because He loves us.

EH: It’s a part of the image of God so we’re a part of the image of God, too.

NC: What I love about that Scripture, too, is He says, “I will make a helpmeet for him.” Do you know that sometimes we forget those little words at the end: “For him”?

We are a helper FOR HIM, for our husbands.

That Scripture in 1 Corinthians 11:3: “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”

Yet there are many Christian women today that don’t receive that man is the head of woman. We’re equal. Of course we’re equal but there are functions, as there are even in the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they function together.

But even in the Godhead the Son submitted His will to the Father. The Father is the head and yet He puts the Son above all things. There is such a beautiful honor amongst them all.

I don’t know why it is that some women find it hard to receive headship because when you receive that you realize your husband is the covering and you submit to that.

You begin to treat him like Jesus. Like you say, Erin, we’re not always perfect at doing it but as we have it in our hearts to do it you begin to have this blessed marriage.

EH: Yeah, really. Women forget that in that headship order there is also protection with our husband’s covering. Our husbands are responsible for so much more. They have to answer to God for so much more than what we would have to answer to God for.

I mean, these women don’t realize that men carry a steeper degree of responsibility.

NC: They do. It’s right at the very beginning when Eve took of the fruit and then she gave to Adam. But whom did God hold responsible?

EH: The man.

NC: Adam, yes, he held him responsible. God has given him that ultimate covering and headship to the man and he is responsible to protect, provide, and cover his wife and his family. That is a powerful thing.

EH: Right, and some women they get like, “Oh my husband is allowing this into the home or having me send my children to school. He’s deciding all these things.”

They’re really upset about it and they get really bitter about it. They end up living a “divided house won’t stand” kind of scenario. It’s really sad.

You pray for grace. If your husband says, “I don’t want you to home school. I want you to send the children to public school.” That’s a real issue. A lot of women want to do that. I understand how they feel but I know women whom God has given the upmost grace to go through that. They trust that their husband made the best decision before God that he was supposed to make and that he bears the responsibility of it and not her.

She just gives him grace every day.

If your husband puts his foot down and says, “No more children” or “No more homeschooling” or “You have to work” or this or that, those are hard things for a woman that wants to do those things with all her heart to not be able to do them. It takes all of the grace of God to receive those things as a woman.

MC: I think I should also pop in there that, okay, with a man saying those things, you don’t say, “Yes sir!” but you talk about it.

EH: Of course! But if you’re honoring him as to the Lord, his heart is more softened.

Approaching him like, “No, that’s terrible! Oh my goodness, I can’t do it!”

Or you could do it like to Jesus Christ Himself, but instead to your husband.

“Oh husband, thank you so much for being the provider and protector of this home.

I so appreciate you and I love you so much for everything. I love how you have our best interest at heart and everything. I’m so sorry if some of my ideas aren’t lining up with your ideas but these are the reasons why I feel it’s important: I so want the education of my children to be focused in on the Lord [or whatever the thing is he’s asking you to do with your children that you don’t agree with].”

If you come to him in a way that’s more reverent you have more of a chance that your husband’s heart would be softened than if you resisted him and got bitter with him.

If you make an appeal to him in such a reverent way it goes a lot further because he’s hearing your heart.

For example, one of the ladies, her husband is not a believer and he doesn’t want her to go to church.

But I said, “Instead you can say to him, ‘I feel that I can be a better wife and mother when I go to church and I love to get the fellowship. But I want to honor you in everything. This is one thing I love to do but I don’t want to dishonor you.’”

Then the husband just said, “Well if it means that much to you, then absolutely you should go.”

If she’s trying to be a better wife he likes that!

NC: Yes. Well time has gone so quickly again.

EH: Oh I know! But we’re going to be back for our TALK SHOWS!

NC: Yes, we’ll have to do that coming up soon!

Anyway, it was so lovely to have you with us. Thank you for sharing and reminding each one of us to treat, each one of us, to just treat our husbands a little more like Jesus.

Let’s pray:

“Father, We just thank You that we can share together as women and remind one another and encourage one another. We pray that You will help us to do it Your way.

“We thank You that You ordained marriage and it is a picture of Christ and the church. Oh Lord God, help us to reveal this picture to the world. We often fall so short, but we ask that You will come and fill us with Your Spirit.

“Give us that heart to walk Your ways. We ask it in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.”

 

TRANSCRIBED BY MORGAN ROTH